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rsadelleLast night, a friend and I went to see a local production of The Revenger's Tragedy. I wanted to go because a production of it is a plot point in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, which is one of my favorite books of all time, and I'd never seen it. My friend knows the director who told her about one of the aspects of her directorial choice that made feminists like us interested in it.
The plot of the play is this: Vindice wants revenge on Duke, who poisoned Vindice's fiancée when she refused Duke's advances. Duke rules over what are named in the program as "The Club Mob." Duke's second wife Duchess has three children: Ambitioso, Supervacuo, and Flaminio. Flaminio rapes Lucretia, the wife of Antonio, one of the program's "Righteous Few." Flaminio is arrested, but the Duke stays his trial, giving Duchess, Ambitioso, and Supervacuo time to sway the verdict. Two of the lords of the court leave to go with Antonio. Lucretia takes - or is given; the plot isn't clear on this - poison, then stabs herself and becomes a ghost who floats through the rest of the play. Meanwhile, Lussorioso, the Duke's heir, is pursuing Castiza, Vindice's younger sister. Hippolito, the last of the siblings named in the program as "The Bohemians," works for Lussorioso and gets Vindice into Court in disguise as Piato, a pimp. Lussorioso sends Vindice to sway Castiza or, if that fails, Gratiana, their mother. Vindice does, and is disgusted that his mother takes the money Lussorioso offers and promises to sway Castiza from her chastity. The Duchess, in revenge for the Duke not just pardoning Flaminio, starts an affair with Spurio, the Duke's bastard son who is only ever referred to as "Bastard" or "The Bastard" on stage. Hippolito tells Vindice about this, and he uses it to set up Lussorioso, who attacks the Duke in the mistaken thought that the man sleeping with the Duchess is Spurio. Lussorioso is then arrested and thrown in jail. The Duke gives his signet to Ambitioso and Supervacuo to take to the law and have them release Lussorioso. Instead, they tell the officer to kill the Duke's child. Vindice and Hippolito set up the Duke and kill him just after showing him that the Duchess and Spurio are having an affair.
When we come back from intermission, Ambitioso and Supervacuo gloat for a bit. The officer brings them a bloody bag with a head, which they avoid taking as they feign grief for Lussorioso's death - right up until Lussorioso shows up. Only then do they find out that Lussorioso was released before they even went to the officer, so when they told the officers to execute the Duke's child, they executed Flaminio. Lussorioso wants revenge on Piato for the set-up involving the Duke and hires Vindice to do so. Vindice and Hippolito have a great time with this, until they realize that they have a problem: Vindice can't kill Piato. Their solution is to dig up the Duke, dress him in Piato's coat, and stab him. Lussorioso realizes the Duke has been dead for a while. Nencio and Sordido, Lussorioso's henchmen - or as the program names them "lords in service to Lussorioso" - urge celebration of Lussorioso's ascension to Duke. Vindice and Hippolito have a talk with their mother to convince her to repent and turn her words toward encouraging Castiza's continued chastity, and she promises to do so. It's too late, however, as Castiza has decided her mother is right and she might as well give in to Lussorioso in return for the money and standing their family will gain. Then comes the celebration. Lussorioso enters with Castiza, but pushes her to the floor after kissing her. Vindice, Hippolito, and the lords who sided with Antonio dress in costumes identical to those of the promised entertainment by the Duchess's children and use them to get into the Court where they kill the Duchess, Lussorioso, Nencio, and Sordido. Ambitioso, Supervacuo, Spurio, and Spurio's servant arrive on the scene to find everyone dead. Ambitioso gloats for a moment, until it's stopped by Supervacuo's knife. In the fray, everyone but Vindice, Hippolito, and the lords who sided with Antonio die. Antonio and the officers arrive on the scene, at which point Vindice confesses/boasts that he and Hippolito killed quite a lot of the dead people. Antonio has them arrested and executed on the spot. He takes the signet ring from Lussorioso's finger after a few moments of staring at it lustfully, and becomes the duke. His last act before the close of the play is to take the Duke's chair and kiss Castiza before pushing her away.
There are a few things that make the production we saw so fascinating. The first is the genderswapped casting. The only women in the original text are Castiza, Gratiana, the Duchess, and Lucretia. Lucretia, by the way, has no lines other than her screams as she's raped. Katie Whitlock, the director, added five more women to her cast. The first is Hippolito, which is interesting but, as my friend pointed out, mildly problematic for the text: why is she, who doesn't seem all that unhappy to be serving at Court, so concerned about her younger sister's chastity? My writer brain kept trying to fashion a reason, but the text doesn't help us.
The second is Ambitioso. As a piece of casting, it's brilliant. The actress, Brittany Siguenza, is perfect as Ambitioso. She's by turns vicious and funny, and always full of attitude. As an element of the play, it's not particularly meaningful; the switch of gender doesn't change anything about the story.
The third and fourth are the two lords who side with Antonio. This is where it starts to get interesting. The play begins with a club scene - complete with club music - that is interrupted by Flaminio's rape of Lucretia. At the beginning of the scene, the lords are part of the Court, dressed in the same style and enjoying the party. The rape is what causes them to leave and join Antonio. This also makes a statement: the only people who care about rape are people who personally know the victim (Antonio) and women without the power to do anything about it (the lords).
The fifth is Lussorioso, and this is what makes the production so completely fascinating. The actress playing her, Sepideh Burgiani, is fantastic, but more than that is what Whitlock has done with her. Lussorioso is not just a woman; she's a domme. She carries - and uses - a riding crop, and her henchmen's service is not just of the guarding and escorting variety. When she sends Piato to Castiza, she sends him with a bracelet to tempt her, and when Castiza gives in, she is indeed wearing it around her wrist. I had a moment of thinking, "Not another evil lesbian," but Lussorioso isn't. For one, she's bi. She kisses both Castiza and Hippolito, but she also kisses Vindice, and when we see her in sexual situations, it's always with her henchmen, who are also her primary sexual partners. Moreover, Lussorioso doesn't read as particularly evil-intentioned. Yes, she wants to take Castiza's virginity, but it's more in the vein of an enjoyable challenge than malice. This, I think, is an effect of the genderswap. What would be downright creepy and a "seduction" more akin to rape from a man doesn't read quite the same way when the power dynamics are about social position and money rather than sex and gender.
I found three of the originally female characters also worth mentioning. I didn't think much of Gratiana when we first met her, or when we met her a second time. She's much better in the scene where Vindice and Hippolito confront her - a scene that's made chilling by the staging, wherein Vindice always seems moments away from snapping her neck. I think part of the problem is a makeup issue: the actress is a college student, and while they slapped a strange, white wig on her, they did nothing to make her face look older.
Lucretia is not particularly interesting as a character herself - she spends two of her three scenes wailing and the third dying - but she remains fully a part of the action once she's dead. The actress playing her, Erin Duffey, is clearly also a dancer, and she flits and dances her way through the play in bare feet. The mingling of theater and dance is one of the things I loved about the play, and Lucretia takes on much of it.
Castiza is perhaps the most interesting of the play's original female characters. When we first meet her, her costuming is very drab and modest. She herself isn't particularly graceful where everyone else in the play seems comfortable in their own skins. However, you can see the change in her body language when she changes to very high heels, short black dress, and hair let loose to go to Lussorioso. She is even more uncomfortable in that outfit, and the cut of her dress only emphasizes how the look doesn't fit her. At that point, her mother tries to talk her back around to chastity, and she protests that her mother still isn't happy with her. This makes Castiza the stand-in for what happens to women: we're told to be chaste, but we're supposed to give in to the lusts of others. When we give in, we're told we're supposed to be chaste. In neither instance is our agency taken into consideration and for many, if not all, of us, neither option sits comfortably.
I mentioned that Lussorioso is a domme, and the kink imagery and overall aesthetic of the play is the second thing that makes it so good. Most of the time, when you run into kink imagery in media, it's exploitative and used to titillate the audience without any substance behind it. I didn't find that in this play. In this play - with one misstep in the staging of a moment between Lussorioso and one of her henchmen - the kink mirrors the power structures already in place. I believed Lussorioso was a domme, not just someone putting on the clothes to call up the image of sex, and I believed that her henchmen were in service to her of their own consenting choice.
The sets also play with the ideas of power. Whenever I've been in that particular theater before, it's been a theater-in-the-round. This production is set up as a traverse stage; the seating is along two sides with the stage running between them. At one end of the stage is a platform with the Duke's oversized leather chair and two stands of liquor behind it and a spiral staircase to one side. At the other is a chaise under a mirror. Also on that end of the stage is a bit of scaffolding over the theater entrance where characters stop to watch the action and two laddered, open columns with chains hanging down in strips along them. You don't put that kind of set piece on a stage without using it, and characters climb up and down the scaffolding and its adjoining column and pull on the chains. In the middle of the stage, there's a tub of water. Pious characters treat it as a font of holy water to cross themselves or others; the others simply as a water source. Vindice drowns Lussorioso in it before stabbing her to finish the job.
The last thing that makes this so fantastic as a production is that it extends out beyond the boundaries of the play. While the audience is still filing in, Vindice stalks in on the diagonal, climbs the scaffolding to leave the skull he picks up later on it, and stalks back out. At the end of intermission, even before everyone is back in their seats, Ambitioso and Supervacuo begin their revelry in celebration of their presumed elevated status. They strut around the stage, but more than that, they come up into the audience and interact with them. Ambitioso sits on a man's lap while Supervacuo surveys the crowd for women who might pique his interest. They switch sides of the stage and continue to play until just before the house lights come down and they take up the text of the play again. It's an impressive bit of improvisation, and neither one of the actors break character for it. At the end of the play, there is no traditional curtain call; instead, the play ends with the entire cast on the stage and they leave one by one. First, the people who are still alive. Then Lucretia stands from where she's placed herself at Antonio's feet and becomes a sort of fairy who awakens the dead. As she touches each person, they rise up and exit, until she gets to Vindice. She leaves the stage then, and he's the last one off. He doesn't take one of the exits the others did, but instead walks up onto the Duke's platform and exits through the curtain behind it.
The plot of the play is this: Vindice wants revenge on Duke, who poisoned Vindice's fiancée when she refused Duke's advances. Duke rules over what are named in the program as "The Club Mob." Duke's second wife Duchess has three children: Ambitioso, Supervacuo, and Flaminio. Flaminio rapes Lucretia, the wife of Antonio, one of the program's "Righteous Few." Flaminio is arrested, but the Duke stays his trial, giving Duchess, Ambitioso, and Supervacuo time to sway the verdict. Two of the lords of the court leave to go with Antonio. Lucretia takes - or is given; the plot isn't clear on this - poison, then stabs herself and becomes a ghost who floats through the rest of the play. Meanwhile, Lussorioso, the Duke's heir, is pursuing Castiza, Vindice's younger sister. Hippolito, the last of the siblings named in the program as "The Bohemians," works for Lussorioso and gets Vindice into Court in disguise as Piato, a pimp. Lussorioso sends Vindice to sway Castiza or, if that fails, Gratiana, their mother. Vindice does, and is disgusted that his mother takes the money Lussorioso offers and promises to sway Castiza from her chastity. The Duchess, in revenge for the Duke not just pardoning Flaminio, starts an affair with Spurio, the Duke's bastard son who is only ever referred to as "Bastard" or "The Bastard" on stage. Hippolito tells Vindice about this, and he uses it to set up Lussorioso, who attacks the Duke in the mistaken thought that the man sleeping with the Duchess is Spurio. Lussorioso is then arrested and thrown in jail. The Duke gives his signet to Ambitioso and Supervacuo to take to the law and have them release Lussorioso. Instead, they tell the officer to kill the Duke's child. Vindice and Hippolito set up the Duke and kill him just after showing him that the Duchess and Spurio are having an affair.
When we come back from intermission, Ambitioso and Supervacuo gloat for a bit. The officer brings them a bloody bag with a head, which they avoid taking as they feign grief for Lussorioso's death - right up until Lussorioso shows up. Only then do they find out that Lussorioso was released before they even went to the officer, so when they told the officers to execute the Duke's child, they executed Flaminio. Lussorioso wants revenge on Piato for the set-up involving the Duke and hires Vindice to do so. Vindice and Hippolito have a great time with this, until they realize that they have a problem: Vindice can't kill Piato. Their solution is to dig up the Duke, dress him in Piato's coat, and stab him. Lussorioso realizes the Duke has been dead for a while. Nencio and Sordido, Lussorioso's henchmen - or as the program names them "lords in service to Lussorioso" - urge celebration of Lussorioso's ascension to Duke. Vindice and Hippolito have a talk with their mother to convince her to repent and turn her words toward encouraging Castiza's continued chastity, and she promises to do so. It's too late, however, as Castiza has decided her mother is right and she might as well give in to Lussorioso in return for the money and standing their family will gain. Then comes the celebration. Lussorioso enters with Castiza, but pushes her to the floor after kissing her. Vindice, Hippolito, and the lords who sided with Antonio dress in costumes identical to those of the promised entertainment by the Duchess's children and use them to get into the Court where they kill the Duchess, Lussorioso, Nencio, and Sordido. Ambitioso, Supervacuo, Spurio, and Spurio's servant arrive on the scene to find everyone dead. Ambitioso gloats for a moment, until it's stopped by Supervacuo's knife. In the fray, everyone but Vindice, Hippolito, and the lords who sided with Antonio die. Antonio and the officers arrive on the scene, at which point Vindice confesses/boasts that he and Hippolito killed quite a lot of the dead people. Antonio has them arrested and executed on the spot. He takes the signet ring from Lussorioso's finger after a few moments of staring at it lustfully, and becomes the duke. His last act before the close of the play is to take the Duke's chair and kiss Castiza before pushing her away.
There are a few things that make the production we saw so fascinating. The first is the genderswapped casting. The only women in the original text are Castiza, Gratiana, the Duchess, and Lucretia. Lucretia, by the way, has no lines other than her screams as she's raped. Katie Whitlock, the director, added five more women to her cast. The first is Hippolito, which is interesting but, as my friend pointed out, mildly problematic for the text: why is she, who doesn't seem all that unhappy to be serving at Court, so concerned about her younger sister's chastity? My writer brain kept trying to fashion a reason, but the text doesn't help us.
The second is Ambitioso. As a piece of casting, it's brilliant. The actress, Brittany Siguenza, is perfect as Ambitioso. She's by turns vicious and funny, and always full of attitude. As an element of the play, it's not particularly meaningful; the switch of gender doesn't change anything about the story.
The third and fourth are the two lords who side with Antonio. This is where it starts to get interesting. The play begins with a club scene - complete with club music - that is interrupted by Flaminio's rape of Lucretia. At the beginning of the scene, the lords are part of the Court, dressed in the same style and enjoying the party. The rape is what causes them to leave and join Antonio. This also makes a statement: the only people who care about rape are people who personally know the victim (Antonio) and women without the power to do anything about it (the lords).
The fifth is Lussorioso, and this is what makes the production so completely fascinating. The actress playing her, Sepideh Burgiani, is fantastic, but more than that is what Whitlock has done with her. Lussorioso is not just a woman; she's a domme. She carries - and uses - a riding crop, and her henchmen's service is not just of the guarding and escorting variety. When she sends Piato to Castiza, she sends him with a bracelet to tempt her, and when Castiza gives in, she is indeed wearing it around her wrist. I had a moment of thinking, "Not another evil lesbian," but Lussorioso isn't. For one, she's bi. She kisses both Castiza and Hippolito, but she also kisses Vindice, and when we see her in sexual situations, it's always with her henchmen, who are also her primary sexual partners. Moreover, Lussorioso doesn't read as particularly evil-intentioned. Yes, she wants to take Castiza's virginity, but it's more in the vein of an enjoyable challenge than malice. This, I think, is an effect of the genderswap. What would be downright creepy and a "seduction" more akin to rape from a man doesn't read quite the same way when the power dynamics are about social position and money rather than sex and gender.
I found three of the originally female characters also worth mentioning. I didn't think much of Gratiana when we first met her, or when we met her a second time. She's much better in the scene where Vindice and Hippolito confront her - a scene that's made chilling by the staging, wherein Vindice always seems moments away from snapping her neck. I think part of the problem is a makeup issue: the actress is a college student, and while they slapped a strange, white wig on her, they did nothing to make her face look older.
Lucretia is not particularly interesting as a character herself - she spends two of her three scenes wailing and the third dying - but she remains fully a part of the action once she's dead. The actress playing her, Erin Duffey, is clearly also a dancer, and she flits and dances her way through the play in bare feet. The mingling of theater and dance is one of the things I loved about the play, and Lucretia takes on much of it.
Castiza is perhaps the most interesting of the play's original female characters. When we first meet her, her costuming is very drab and modest. She herself isn't particularly graceful where everyone else in the play seems comfortable in their own skins. However, you can see the change in her body language when she changes to very high heels, short black dress, and hair let loose to go to Lussorioso. She is even more uncomfortable in that outfit, and the cut of her dress only emphasizes how the look doesn't fit her. At that point, her mother tries to talk her back around to chastity, and she protests that her mother still isn't happy with her. This makes Castiza the stand-in for what happens to women: we're told to be chaste, but we're supposed to give in to the lusts of others. When we give in, we're told we're supposed to be chaste. In neither instance is our agency taken into consideration and for many, if not all, of us, neither option sits comfortably.
I mentioned that Lussorioso is a domme, and the kink imagery and overall aesthetic of the play is the second thing that makes it so good. Most of the time, when you run into kink imagery in media, it's exploitative and used to titillate the audience without any substance behind it. I didn't find that in this play. In this play - with one misstep in the staging of a moment between Lussorioso and one of her henchmen - the kink mirrors the power structures already in place. I believed Lussorioso was a domme, not just someone putting on the clothes to call up the image of sex, and I believed that her henchmen were in service to her of their own consenting choice.
The sets also play with the ideas of power. Whenever I've been in that particular theater before, it's been a theater-in-the-round. This production is set up as a traverse stage; the seating is along two sides with the stage running between them. At one end of the stage is a platform with the Duke's oversized leather chair and two stands of liquor behind it and a spiral staircase to one side. At the other is a chaise under a mirror. Also on that end of the stage is a bit of scaffolding over the theater entrance where characters stop to watch the action and two laddered, open columns with chains hanging down in strips along them. You don't put that kind of set piece on a stage without using it, and characters climb up and down the scaffolding and its adjoining column and pull on the chains. In the middle of the stage, there's a tub of water. Pious characters treat it as a font of holy water to cross themselves or others; the others simply as a water source. Vindice drowns Lussorioso in it before stabbing her to finish the job.
The last thing that makes this so fantastic as a production is that it extends out beyond the boundaries of the play. While the audience is still filing in, Vindice stalks in on the diagonal, climbs the scaffolding to leave the skull he picks up later on it, and stalks back out. At the end of intermission, even before everyone is back in their seats, Ambitioso and Supervacuo begin their revelry in celebration of their presumed elevated status. They strut around the stage, but more than that, they come up into the audience and interact with them. Ambitioso sits on a man's lap while Supervacuo surveys the crowd for women who might pique his interest. They switch sides of the stage and continue to play until just before the house lights come down and they take up the text of the play again. It's an impressive bit of improvisation, and neither one of the actors break character for it. At the end of the play, there is no traditional curtain call; instead, the play ends with the entire cast on the stage and they leave one by one. First, the people who are still alive. Then Lucretia stands from where she's placed herself at Antonio's feet and becomes a sort of fairy who awakens the dead. As she touches each person, they rise up and exit, until she gets to Vindice. She leaves the stage then, and he's the last one off. He doesn't take one of the exits the others did, but instead walks up onto the Duke's platform and exits through the curtain behind it.